Testing is commonly performed to evaluate a response of a material to an impact. Such testing is of particular importance when the material is to be used as part of a structural element of an engineered device, whereby impact testing may be used to determine that the material is capable of withstanding one or more impacts of a known force or energy without catastrophically failing and/or being damaged beyond a tolerable level.
In one example, an impact test simulates one or more incidental and/or intentional impacts of a material by a projectile. Specifically, an impact test may simulate a force of impact on a composite material to be used in the construction of an aircraft fuselage, wherein the simulated impact forces may model a real world impact that may result from a dropped tool, among others. Those of ordinary skill in the art, however, will readily understand various different impact scenarios that may be simulated with an impact test of an engineering material.
Currently, impact testing is performed on test specimens of a given material. For example, a composite material to be used in the construction of an aircraft fuselage may undergo impact testing in a laboratory environment, and wherein the test specimen of the composite material (otherwise referred to as a “coupon”) may measure, for example, 100×150 mm. As such, current impact testing devices drop known masses under the force of gravity onto test specimens. This methodology, however, presents multiple limitations. For example, a small test specimen of an engineering material may behave differently to that of a completed structure constructed using the same engineering material, when impacted. Specifically, a test specimen may transform less kinetic energy from an impact into elastic deformation than that of a larger engineered structure. Additionally, a vibrational response of the material may differ significantly in a complete structure from that of a test specimen as a result of complex vibrational modes set up in a full-scale structure. Accordingly, predicting an impact response of a full-scale structure constructed using a specific material may be difficult when using current impact testing methodology.